Ing., CSc Prokop Šmirous

“The school was managed well. I would say that it was also thanks to the headmaster, Mr Kořist, who - God bless his soul - later admitted that when my documents arrived, he destroyed them so he could even accept me at all. The way we agreed it, [it was stated that] I had said in the interviews that my father was a worker in Jáchymov. That was kind of true, so I hardly even lied, and I managed to stick to the school. Except there was a boy back then in the third year, one Růžička, who wasn’t very bright, so he got three fives [Fs - trans.] in his half-year report. His father was a Party functionary in Žďár nad Sázavou, and he came to the school to see about the matter. He had the list of students checked, and he found that I was there as well, so he ordered the school management to expel me immediately.”

“A committee arrived and they ordered us what we were and were not allowed to take with us. We had to leave the refrigerator and washing machine there, and even the AEG electric stove which my mom had been given as her wedding present. We later tried to claim these things back. Everything had to stay there. We were only allowed to take two beds, duvets, and some things and the transported us to Růžkovy Lhotice where they unloaded our things from the truck. There was a farm, and as I learnt later, the composer Bedřich Smetana used to live there for some time. There were some paintings inside the rooms and the rooms were damp. They had not been lived in and they were damp. We thus spent the night there, because they unloaded our beds and duvets from the truck there. We had good friends in Leština, Mr. and Mrs. Čepek, and they informed our relatives who then sent the car with my uncle there the following day. They went to see the farmer who was to give us accommodation and employment, and he replied that he was not interested in us and that he was not keen on caring for anybody else. I think that my uncle even had him sign some paper to confirm this. They loaded the few things that we had there and they brought us to Vysočina.”

“The Germans set up a kind of headquarters in our place as well, in early 1945 during the war. They took two of our rooms. One, in which we three children had slept, they made into a tailor’s shop, and then one big room, where they set up their office, so we were all crammed up in the bedroom. And sometime towards the end of April, presumably with the front approaching, they packed up and left again.”

“After the Číhošť Miracle, foreign journalists, all the local Catholics, and other curious people started coming to Číhošť, which is six kilometres away from Leština, and the matter continued to be discussed. When they attempted to re-enact it later on, during the investigation, many things got out, although they were supposed to have been secret, and that caused further anxiety. At home, we spoke of Číhošť as of a portent of something worse to come. And it really did come.”

“I began studying the school in the small town of Golčův Jeníkov and I remember that during one lesson the civics teacher Mr. Rada asked the children to tell everybody what they parents did. He called my name and said: ‘Well, Šmirous, tell us what your father does that he is behind the bars. Tell us what an enemy of state he is.’ I broke into tears, of course. He ordered me to leave the classroom and that was it.”